By Chip Chandler — Digital Content Producer
Amarillo Master Chorale will debut under a new conductor, and Harrington String Quartet will return minus one member.
The chorale will perform with new artistic director and conductor Nathaniel Fryml in its season-opening concert, Anticipation, at 8 p.m. Saturday at St. Paul United Methodist Church, 4317 W. Interstate 40. Tickets are $15 for adults and $5 for students in advance and $20 for adults and $7 for students at the door. Call 806-371-5340.
"Many of these pieces are old favorites of mine which I am excited to share, but there are a couple that I discovered for the first time while exploring the library here at AC," said Fryml, who was hired to replace long-time Amarillo College choral director Steven Weber, who retired at the end of last school year. "In fact, one of my favorite pieces on the program (The Risen Sun) was completely unfamiliar to me until I moved here to Amarillo. Perhaps this is more than coincidence."
The concert will feature several examples of church music, African-American spirituals, folk songs and more, including Neckereien by Johannes Brahms, "The Promise of Living" from The Tender Land by Aaron Copland and Fryml's own work, Pathways of Delight, adapted from Proverbs and Psalms verses.
"My hope is to write at least one new work for the Master Chorale each season," Fryml said.
The quartet also will perform Saturday with a 7:30 p.m. concert at Mary Moody Northen Recital Hall at West Texas A&M University in Canyon. Tickets are $20 for adults and $10 for students. Call 806-651-2840.
The concert will be the quartet's first without longtime member Keith Redpath, who moved earlier this year with his family "to Colorado Springs where he and (wife) Daina are on the faculty teaching violin in a fine-arts charter school. They are also members of the Colorado Springs Philharmonic," said Robert Hansen, department head of WT's School of Music, where the quartet is in residence.
"The Harrington Quartet is in the final phase of the search for a replacement to complete the quartet and a public announcement will be made very soon. We anticipate a complete quartet beginning in January," Hansen said.
The concert, New Beginnings: Quartet, Reinvented, will feature Ludwig van Beethoven's String Trio Opus 9 No. 2 in D Major, Ernő Dohnányi's Serenade for String Trio Opus 10, and Robert Schumann's Piano Quartet Opus 47 in E-flat Major, featuring guest pianist Lee Phillips.
Chip Chandler is a digital content producer for Panhandle PBS. He can be contacted at Chip.Chandler@actx.edu, at @chipchandler1 on Twitter and at www.facebook.com/chipchandlerwriter on Facebook.
